The Cloud Computing Movement Will Continue. Investing in purchase-and-install software is falling by the wayside as institutions catch onto the value of using "cloud" applications that are housed (and accessed) online. Not only are these options more affordable and easier to implement, but they also include vast storage capacity that can be used for, say, portfolio assessments. "Using cloud computing, schools can create large collections of loosely-sorted data (such as school records, written documents and even video recordings)," said Bob Spielvogel, CTO at EDC, a Newton, MA-based nonprofit that creates programs to address educational challenges, "and then utilize that information to track project activity and conduct portfolio assessments across the student's entire college career." With these and other uses gaining ground in the higher education space, expect cloud computing's popularity to grow in 2011.

College officials who favor mobile Web sites say that developing apps is getting too expensive. It can require creating and updating multiple versions of a single program, one for iPhones and another for Android phones, for instance. By contrast, a single mobile Web site can work with all kinds of devices, potentially lowering development costs.

The University of Central Florida has strategically implemented blended learning into its institutional practice. “They’re really the leader in terms of an institutional strategy,” Owston says. “They’ve found that students by far and large tend to prefer this. And it’s cut down on capitol—they’re able to make better use of existing resources.”

Seventy-three percent of them said they would not be able to study without some form of technology, and 38% said that they could not even go more than 10 minutes without checking their laptop, smartphone, tablet or ereader.

7. Join.meApplication: Screen sharingEnter join.me in your browser, and you're on your way to sharing your screen with anyone with whom you share the access code. Join.me also allows you to transfer control to allow others to interact with applications running on your screen. A phone conference feature lets everyone looking at your screen dial in to a common call. "Instead of canceling class during a snowstorm, I met my students virtually," recalls Frydenberg of one instance when he used the application. "They met me on join.me, where I shared my screen, and we all called in to listen to the conversation. I called on students in the chat room who had questions, and asked individual students to complete different steps of a software demonstration."